Horses tend to die in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tsetse fly - Wikipedia
I also think looking for one particular cause is a mistake. There were certain factors that led to European domination in the 19th and 20th centuries, but every advantage Europe had enabled the leveraging of other advantages. You get a virtuous cycle where improvements in technology and social technology enable other improvements, and those improvements enable other improvements.
So while geography and history start to explain why Africa is poor, today the main cause of African poverty is African poverty. And while there are debatable historical reasons for European hegemony, today the main cause of European and American prosperity is European and American prosperity.
I thought this article might be interesting to those who wish to view all of Africa as a wasteland.
It used to be that when the U.S. economy sneezed, the rest of the world caught a cold. Today, with globalization, everybody has a pretty bad flu – except for Africa, where many of the more than 20 stock markets are reporting gains similar to those of the Nigerian exchange. I’ve been working on a film exploring Africa’s frontier markets for the past couple of years, and the returns I’ve found can only be described as eye-popping. African markets have outperformed Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and many other indexes over the past decade. I’ve met people who have doubled and even tripled their investments.
Africa today is a fast-moving continent that has made tremendous changes. And yet we in the West cling to age-old stereotypes that undermine confidence in its markets. Africa needs to be able to compete fairly for investment funds, because trade and investment are the only sustainable way out of poverty. And the rest of the world needs to take a new look at the continent, because trust me, we’re missing out on some great deals.
Over the past decade, Africa’s gross domestic product has grown by more than 5 percent, on a par with the rest of the world, according to the World Bank. High prices for commodities, including oil, minerals such as copper and gold, and such agricultural products as corn and cocoa have been a driving force in the continent’s recent economic fortunes. But Africa is also making inroads into manufacturing. The South Africans brag that if you drive a Hummer, you’re driving a car made in Africa. Ditto if you drive a BMW with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. The next time you fly on a Boeing aircraft, look out the window and you’ll see engines with parts made in South Africa. But that country isn’t alone. I’ve seen factories in Lesotho that produce Gap and Old Navy clothing, car parts manufactured in Botswana and call centers in Kenya and Uganda.